Xilotl (MH537v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Xilotl (“Tender Ear of Maize,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a frontal view of an upright ear of corn with the husk pulled back and the kernels clearly visible. Some silk comes off the top of the ear, and a bit of the stem also remains.
Stephanie Wood
Corn cobs most often came in two forms--forming, ready to eat, and dried, for pulling off the cob and grinding into corn flower for making tortillas and tamales, among other foods. The xilotl is the former. Francisca Xilotl was one of five widows presented as a group.
The term and name Xilotl is much more common than Elotl in this collection. Perhaps the name Xilotl, which refers to the corn cob that was still forming kernels, was more akin to a new baby (as a metaphor) than Elotl, which had already formed its kernels.
Stephanie Wood
franca xillotl ycnoçiva. v.
Francisca Xilotl, icnocihua v
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
corn, maize, maíz, elotes, food, comida, plants, plantas, agricultura
xilo(tl), small tender ear of maize, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xilotl
Mazorca Tierna, Jilote, Elote
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 537v, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=154&st=image
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).